“When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other.”
“It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”
“It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.”
“What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?”
“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”
“Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”
“To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.”
“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”
“There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.”
“There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.”
“Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.”
“Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.”
“We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.”
“The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves.”
“When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.”
“The real antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.”
“It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.”
“Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.”
“We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.”
“It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.”
“We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.”
“It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.”
“The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”
“Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.”
“The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.”
“Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.”
“Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.”
“How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.”
“Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.”
“Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.”